Post by cjm on Oct 2, 2014 5:21:44 GMT

How can they be so careless?

DALLAS — Parents rushed to get their children from school Wednesday after learning that five students may have had contact with the Ebola patient in a Dallas hospital, as Gov. Rick Perry and other leaders reassured the public that there is no cause for alarm.

The patient, identified by The Associated Press as Thomas Eric Duncan of Liberia, arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 20 to visit family. Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson said county officials suspect that 12 to 18 people may have had contact with Duncan.

What a bunch of idiots. They are actually trying to wipe themselves out.

“If we take actions that seem like they may work, they may be the kind of solution to a complex problem that is quick, simple and wrong,” said Frieden in a press conference. “The approach of isolating a country is that it’s going to make it harder to get help into that country."

That would enable disease to spread more widely and, ultimately, "potentially spread more to other countries in Africa and become more of a risk to us here,” Frieden added.

Post by Trog on Oct 9, 2014 7:46:31 GMT

Ebola is not that dangerous in terms of populations.

It suffers from being too deadly – infestations are self limiting, to a large extent: Everybody who gets infected shows almost immediate symptoms and dies shortly afterwards, without having had the opportunity to spread the disease.

A much more dangerous infectious agent is one where symptoms are mild and slow to appear and death only occurs weeks or months later. This has the effect of bringing an infected person into contact with a much larger proportion of the population before being identified. For instance TB has and will kill many, many more millions of people than Ebola ever will, even though the TB bacterium is actually a very weak infectious agent.

Post by cjm on Oct 9, 2014 18:42:23 GMT

It suffers from being too deadly – infestations are self limiting, to a large extent: Everybody who gets infected shows almost immediate symptoms and dies shortly afterwards, without having had the opportunity to spread the disease.

A much more dangerous infectious agent is one where symptoms are mild and slow to appear and death only occurs weeks or months later. This has the effect of bringing an infected person into contact with a much larger proportion of the population before being identified. For instance TB has and will kill many, many more millions of people than Ebola ever will, even though the TB bacterium is actually a very weak infectious agent.

Very reassuring!

Two small concerns: In a highly populated environment, I would suspect that the damage can be quite substantial before all potential targets are wiped out.

There also is the recently raised possibility that transfer of the disease might not be limited to actual contact (at least in two cases the contact was not that obvious).

Post by cjm on Oct 12, 2014 16:05:14 GMT

SAN ANTONIO — A health worker in Texas at the hospital where the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the US died last week has tested positive for the deadly virus in a preliminary test, the state’s health department said on Sunday.

Post by cjm on Oct 13, 2014 4:53:32 GMT

Airplane cabin cleaning crews at New York’s LaGuardia International Airport began a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, citing, in part, possible exposure to the Ebola virus. Meanwhile, a poll found most Americans want flights banned from Ebola-ravaged areas.

Post by cjm on Oct 13, 2014 21:18:39 GMT

...

Ebola has so far killed more than 4000 people in seven countries since the beginning of the year, but it’s not only the speed with which the virus spreads and kills that is terrifying. It’s the gruesome, undignified way it ends some victims’ lives – painfully, with uncontrolled vomiting, diarrhoea, and bleeding to death from all orifices, through the skin, from the inside out.

Authorities have done their best (and worst) to contain the epidemic in West Africa, and panic of a pandemic along with it. They’ve also given mixed messages on how the virus spreads, who’s most at risk, and optimum treatment and prevention. As the virus stretches from Guinea’s forests to Madrid and the US, there are signs they aren’t telling you the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the world’s worst Ebola outbreak on record.

Whether any “untruths” turn out to be from human error (and ignorance) rather than deliberate lies of omission or commission, only time will tell.

I have to confess a mea culpa of my own: a blog I wrote on how best to protect yourself from Ebola infection is limited, and based on World Health Organisation (WHO) and US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) early message that Ebola is contagious, not infectious. In other words, it’s not airborne – which by definition “implies inhalation of an infectious dose of virus from a suspended cloud of small dried droplets”.

Not everyone agrees with that. Dr Michael Osterholm, director of the US Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said in an opinion article “the risk of airborne Ebola is real“, and “until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic”.